


'X' Is Sixty-Four

by shelovestoship



Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: AU, F/M, One-Shot, This is a weird one, kinda sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:47:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26996149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelovestoship/pseuds/shelovestoship
Summary: “Do you know the story of the Grim?” Juliet asked him as they walked across the graveyard.“No?” he said.
Relationships: Juliet Higgins/Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	'X' Is Sixty-Four

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t really know what this is.

**'X' Is Sixty-Four**

Magnum didn’t tell anyone he went to the graveyard every day after school. Not his best friends, not his girlfriend and not even his temporary guardian Robin Masters.

He didn’t actually go there to talk to his mother or anything. That just felt silly when he’d tried. But he did go there and just sit. Did homework. Thought about what he’d do next. Once high school was over in a few months.

For the first month or two, he didn’t really see anyone. An old lady or two. Then he started seeing the blonde girl.

She liked to sit on the big stone graves. He was sure those fancy graves had special names but he didn’t know them. He got the feeling she was watching him but she never came to talk to him.

Not until one day in May. The weather was perfect, sky blue, air high and clear. She was already standing by his mother’s grave when he got there.

“Hey,” he said, something between a greeting and a what-are-you-doing-over-here? 

“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously, one perfect eyebrow raised. Her accent was British and her tone haughty. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s my mother’s grave.” He pointed to the stone she stood behind.

“That doesn’t explain _you_.”

He frowned. “Better than it does you. I see you sneaking around all over. You’re not visiting any specific grave.”

“I work here. I’m the caretaker.”

He somehow doubted that. She looked no older than him, maybe younger even. Plus she was wearing a white blouse and a black skirt. Either that was the world’s strangest caretaker uniform or she was lying.

“Look, it’s a free country, isn’t it? I can be here and you can too. No explanation required.” He sat down and pulled out his math homework, determined he’d ignore her.

He managed quite well until she whispered, “That’s wrong,” about two inches from his left ear, making him jump. “You’re not very good at maths are you?”

“I do fine,” he said, because even though it wasn’t his favorite topic exactly he’d never failed or anything. It just didn’t come easy.

“It’s sixty-four. X is sixty-four.”

He double-checked and realized she was right.

“Thanks,” he said, looking up. Then got mad. Because she was sitting on his mother’s gravestone. “Hey! Get off from there.”

She did. “She’s not there.”

“I know,” he said. “She’s in heaven.”

“Maybe,” she said, checking her nails for dirt. “I just know she’s not here.” She focused her brown eyes intently at him. “So why are you?”

He wasn’t sure himself, so he just shrugged.

Seeming annoyed by this answer - or lack of - she turned and began to walk off.

“Wait!” he called. “What’s your name? I’m Thomas Magnum.”

She turned back to him and looked thoughtful. As if debating with herself. Then she finally said, “Juliet…. Juliet Higgins.”

* * *

“Do you live around here? Or are you just visiting?” he asked her a few weeks later. She’d come to mock him for his math skills every day since they’d first talked.

“I guess I live here now,” she said. “My mother married an American and took us over here. I’m going to go back one day though. I don’t much like it here. No offense.”

“I don’t like it very much here either.” He drew an anchor in his notebook and began filling it in. “I think I’m going to join the Navy when school's out. I want to be a SEAL. Do something good. Help people.”

“That’s very noble of you.” She didn’t sound very impressed though. Maybe she didn’t know that the SEALs were the best of the best. She was British after all. But telling her so felt rather presumptuous, like bragging about something that wasn’t his to brag about yet. 

“And you’re going back to London I guess? Is your dad still there?” he asked, wondering if he’d ever see her again. Heck, he wondered that every time he left the graveyard. He was still working up the courage to ask for her cellphone number or snap-chat or even insta handle.

“No. My father is dead.”

“I’m sorry. My dad’s dead too,” he told her. 

“I know,” she pointed over to another section of the graveyard. “He’s in the old graveyard. Thomas Sullivan Magnum. Just like you.”

“Isn’t it all the same graveyard?” he asked, just because he’d never heard anyone refer to it as the old graveyard.

She shook her head. “No. They put a wall along there.” She pointed to a very low garden wall with an opening in it. “That made this a separate graveyard. Old church rules.”

“It’s strange that you know that,” he pointed out. But Juliet Higgins was full of strange facts.

She smiled at him. “It’s much less strange than your fascination with American Football.”

“It’s not strange. In fact, you should come to the game on Saturday,” he said. He’d been trying to work up the nerve to ask her to come see him practice after school but this was better. Game night.

She looked at him for a long moment, then said very simply, “No. That won’t be possible.”

“Right,” he said, looking away, not sure why he felt so sad.

* * *

“I can’t believe how fast it’s been,” he told her, walking back and forth while she leaned on his mother’s gravestone. He didn’t mind her doing that so much anymore. “The recruitment interview, the tests. I’m going to basic training three days after graduation. It’s just ten days away!”

“I suppose I should congratulate you,” she said but didn’t sound happy. “But I’m not sure I can.”

“I know you’re not such a big fan of the military but come on Higgy,” he said, stopping in front of her. “This is a big deal.”

“Whatever gave you that idea?” She frowned up at him. “My father was a military man. I believe in serving one’s country.”

“I didn’t know that. I always...you never seemed to like it when I talked about it.” He felt a little confused because there had to him always seemed to be something unhappy about her when he brought up his future, his hopes of serving in the Navy.

“I just don’t want to meet you here, under different circumstances,” she said, turning away.

_She’s afraid you’re going to die._

The thought burned through him and before he could stop himself he reached for her hand, and pulled her to him, and kissed her. She hesitated for a moment, then kissed him back, pressing her body to his.

“What was that about?” she asked as he pulled away. “And don’t you have a girlfriend?”

“Not since last week. I broke up with Abby.”

She didn’t look as happy about this fact as he’d hoped. He figured she was upset he was leaving in so short of a time. Leaving to go off doing something dangerous, possibly life-threatening. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her eye-catching on something to the side. “Someone’s coming.”

He glanced over to where she was looking, saw an old lady, as she ducked out of him arms and began moving through the graves. 

“What you mean? Why I shouldn’t have broken up with Abby?” he half called after her as he checked the old lady and picked up his bag, about to follow her.

But she’d already darted away, disappeared amongst the graves and greenery.

* * *

She didn’t come to the cemetery the next night. Nor the night after that. He wondered if kissing her had been a mistake. Maybe it had been. He didn’t know that much about her… yet even after just knowing her for a barley a month, he felt had never been closer to anyone.

The third day he didn’t go back. 

He went to a pre-graduation party. He hoped to maybe see her there. But she wasn’t there of course. He was pretty sure she didn’t even go to his school or any other in the area.

He’d checked every yearbook and even asked if anyone knew a girl named Juliet Higgins but nothing. Even Google hadn't known anything about her. 

He wondered if that was even her real name. She had hesitated when she told him. But at the same time, why would she have lied?

* * *

When he went to the graveyard the night before he was going to ship out to basic training, she was there.

She was in a black dress and smiled at him when he opened the gate.

“Hello Thomas.”

“I was worried you wouldn’t be here,” he said, wanting to hug her but was unsure where they stood.

“I wouldn’t miss out on saying goodbye,” she said, head tilted. “Goodbyes are important.”

She held out her hand for him. He took it, enjoying the tingling connection. It wasn’t like anything he’d felt with any other girl.

“Do you know the story of the Grim?” she asked as they walked over the graveyard.

“No?” he said. He had some vague memory from Harry Potter where he was pretty sure it was a death omen.

“You see, the first soul that is buried in a new graveyard is trapped there forever, to help guide the rest of souls that are laid to rest there. So in the olden days, they’d always bury a dog before anyone else in a new graveyard. The dog would guide the recently departed into the afterlife.”

“They killed a dog to have someone to guide people to heaven? That’s rough,” he said. “Poor dog.”

“I like how you’re so sure about heaven existing,” she said, hand trailing along the top of a grave. “What if it’s just blackness and nothingness? Hell and horrible torture for everyone?”

“I’m not sure,” he said, stopping her. “I just have faith.”

She ponders this, looking up at him. “You’re a good person Thomas Magnum. You don’t need to go to war or save the world to prove that, you know that right?”

He said nothing because what were good intentions if you didn’t actually use the power you had or could achieve to make people’s lives better?

“Maybe not. But I want to.”

She took a breath. “Will you ask them to bury you here, if you die? Next to your mother?”

It was a gruesome thing to ask, but she did say things like that sometimes.

“I’d probably ask them to scatter my ashes in the ocean,” he said. “Maybe they could put a stone here for me though. Would you come visit me?” He tried to make it sound playful, joking, but he wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“I’d rather you were really buried here,” she said, tugging on his hand. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

She pulled him to the corner of the graveyard. He knew this corner and had never gone to look at the graves, most of which had lambs on them.

“I hate that they put a lamb on it,” she said, tugging aside some weeds from a small stone. “I was almost seventeen. Not a child.”

He registered her words and the name on the grave. 

_Juliet Kira Higgins_

_1985- 2001_

_Gone Too Soon_

_Beloved Daugther_

But at the same time, he felt her hand, warm and alive, in his. 

“What is this?” he asked, letting go and stumbling back.

“I wasn’t sure how to tell you. But I figured you should know. Before you left. So you don’t...”

“So I don’t what?”

She turned back to her gravestone and brush her finger along the line of her name. _Juliet_.

“Think there is some future we could have,” she said. “There isn’t.” 

“Because you’re dead?” he asked, even though that was utterly impossible. He was talking to her. He’d held her, kissed her.

She was warm and solid. Alive.

It must be some cruel prank she was pulling. She’d known this girl’s grave was here and taken her name and now she was messing with him. 

He shook his head, not able to believe he thought they were friends...more than that. That he had felt something for her that he’d never before. And it had all been a game to her.

“Wait,” she said and was suddenly right there. “I just-”

“Leave me alone.” He kept on walking. 

She followed and stepped ahead of him on the path leading out of the graveyard, blocking the way. “Watch.”

She opened the gate and stepped through. And disappeared. Like she’d never been, from one step to the next. Solid, real and then nothing where she’d been, except air. 

He just stared, not believing his eyes. 

“I’m a grim.” She was beside him suddenly solid again. “Mine was the first grave on this of the wall. The new graveyard.”

“You’re dead?” he asked, still not believing it. Even though she’d appeared and disappeared like...well, magic. He reached out, touching a curl of her hair. “How can I see you? Touch you then?”

“I don’t know why. Before only the dead could.”

He shook his head. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

“I don’t know. I just thought you should know.” She looked down and moved her feet nervously. “I thought you could ask them to bury you here...just in case. And then we could see each other once more time. Because I don’t think you’ll see me the next time you come. Not unless you're dead too.”

For some reason, he suddenly felt sure of the same. Like being away from this place - her place - would forever take his ability to see her from him.

It was almost enough to make him want to stay. Stay forever in this nowhere town, spend his free time in a graveyard with a girl who was long dead yet as real as he. 

“You can’t stay here,” she said as if reading his mind. “You have too much to do in the world. But you can see me again. One day.”

One day. When he was dead and buried.

“I’ll tell them I want to be buried here,” he said, tucking some hair behind her ear. “But you should know, I don’t plan to die any time soon.”

“Good,” she told him. “I don’t want you to.”

He kissed her. 

Then he left.

* * *

He didn’t see her for sixty-four years.

* * *


End file.
